Bill Gates-founded company broke ground at site earlier this year
Engineering, construction and project management company Bechtel will no longer be involved with TerraPower’s Natrium power plant project in Kemmerer, Wyoming, after the two companies were unable to reach an agreement on the next phase of the project, the American Nuclear Society (ANS) reported.
ANS quoted a TerraPower spokesperson as saying this will not impact the Kemmerer-1 project timeline, which currently calls for construction completion in 2030, and commercial operation by 2031.
“Construction in Kemmerer will maintain its current schedule with the exemplary subcontractor teams and EPC [engineering, procurement, and construction] support services from commercial-grade firms that have been working on-site,” TerraPower said.
On 15 September Virginia-based Bechtel filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice with the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement.
According to the notice, Bechtel said there could be workplace reductions of approximately 200 positions because the two companies “were unable to reach an agreement on the next phase of the project and have decided to move forward separately”.
TerraPower, co-founded by Bill Gates, broke ground in Wyoming earlier this year to bring the first utility-scale nuclear power plant of its kind to the United States.
Kemmerer-1 was the first US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval of a commercial nuclear reactor in nearly a decade, and the first approval for a commercial non-light water reactor in more than 40 years.
The Natrium plant, a TerraPower and GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy technology, features a 345-MW sodium-cooled fast reactor with an integrated molten salt-based energy storage system.
The storage technology can boost energy output to 500 MW of power when needed, equivalent to the amount of energy needed to power around 400,000 homes. The energy storage capability is designed to keep base output steady, ensuring constant reliability, and can quickly ramp up when demand peaks. It is the only advanced reactor design with this unique feature.
